I was recently rereading a paper known as the “nun study”. It looked at the effects of positive emotions on mortality and the findings are amazing. The authors researched a group of catholic nuns in Milwaukee and Baltimore who were born before 1917. Back in the 1930 the nuns were asked by the Mother Superior of the North American sisters to write an autobiography before they took their religious vows. Decades later in 1991 the sisters were enrolled in a study investigating aging and Alzheimer’s disease. The authors coded the autobiographies for positive and negative emotion words (things like happiness, love, fear, and anxiety). Those that had written the fewest positive emotion words in their autobiography in the 1930’s lived, on average, 86.6 years, those that wrote the most positive emotion words lived, on average, 93.5 years or almost 7 years longer! And because they were all catholic nuns it is unlikely that lifestyle differences between the groups would account for the difference (none of the nuns smoked or drank alcohol).

How could this be? Well recent work on positive emotions shows that feeling a positive emotion can undo the effects of stress, increase your psychological resilience, and help you learn new coping strategies. Although each individual instance of positive emotion may only make a small difference across a lifetime feeling more positive emotion seems to make a big difference.

Further Reading:

Danner, D. D., Snowdon, D. A., Friesen, W. V., (2001). Positive emotions in early life and longevity: Findings from the nun study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 804-813.

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.